Acquity Group Backs Into Its Public Offering

E-commerce firm prices lower than its expected range

E-commerce consulting firm Acquity Group (AMEX:AQ) struggled with its initial public offering Friday. AQ’s deal ended up pricing at $6, which was below the $8-to-$10 range originally expected, and it headed about 5% lower in Friday trading.

Founded 11 years ago, Acquity has become a top player in the digital agency space — with the main focus on creating e-commerce sites for numerous big-name brands, including Proctor & Gamble (NYSE:PG), Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) and Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT). Since inception, the company has served more than 500 clients.

“We focus on something we call brand e-commerce,” Christopher Dalton, CEO and co-founder of Acquity, told me this morning. “It means that the brand must be part of all digital experiences for the customer.”

Essentially, brand e-commerce means personalizing the experience to a company’s customers. This involves connections to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. It also is about taking a multi-channel approach — Acquity has deep experience with tablets and smartphones.

So far, the strategy has been working. The company doubled its revenues — from $51.1 million to $106.7 million — between 2009 and 2011. It also finished $8.3 million in the black last year.

But the big opportunity for Acquity is China. According to IDC, the e-commerce market in China is expected to reach $2.9 trillion by 2015.

“We are helping our U.S. clients benefit from the growth opportunities,” Dalton said. “But we are also getting Chinese clients that want to build e-commerce sites in the U.S.”

Acquity raised about $33 million on the deal. Underwriters included Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Oppenheimer.

Based in Silicon Valley, Tom Taulli is in the heart of IPO land. On a regular basis, he talks with many of the top tech CEOs and founders trying to find the next hot deals and finding out which start-ups are stinkers.

A long-time follower of the IPO scene, back in 1999 Tom started one of the first sites in the space called WebIPO. It was a place where investors got research as well as access to deals for the dot-com boom. Tom also wrote the top-selling book, Investing in IPOs. In it, he covers all the aspects of analyzing an IPO, such as reading the prospectus, detecting the risk factors and understanding some of the arcane regulations. But don’t worry — if that process is too intimidating for you, thankfully Tom will do the legwork for you right here in the IPO Playbook blog.

Tom is routinely quoted in the media about upcoming deals with his interviews on CNBC and Bloomberg TV, but he is eager to take your questions too. You can message him on Twitter at @ttaulli. And feel free to weigh in via the comments section on any of his IPO Playbook posts.